WTF: Mollie Sugden special

• Matt Lucas: ‘I smoked pot in my late teens and early 20s and it turned me into a crashing bore. Drugs are rubbish.’

• A little-known fact about Mollie Sugden: she owes much of her success to the Black September terrorist organisation.

• Although almost always known as ‘Mrs’ Slocombe, her character was occasionally referred to by her first name – even though no one could ever remember it. ‘Even the writers would forget,’ she said in a 2003 interview. ‘They forgot what her first name was, which was Betty Slocombe, and they kept forgetting and I kept getting a different name.’

• Most of the tributes to Mollie Sugden rightly concentrated on Are You Being Served? But she also starred in what has been labelled ‘one of the worst British sitcoms of all-time’, Come Back Mrs Noah. In this 1987 offering from Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, she plays a housewife accidentally blasted off on a British spaceship. Here is a mercifully brief clip:
  

• Sugden had a penchant for fast cars – owning a Porsche well into her Sixties – even being caught doing 92mph on the motorway when she was a pensioner.

• And why does she owe her career to Black September? When the Palestinian militants murdered 11 members of the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympics, the BBC suddenly found itself with huge holes in its schedule, with none of the planned sport taking place. Executives decided to put out some unscreened comedy pilots, including Are You Being Served? It got good ratings and good feedback, so a full series was ordered.

• Dawn French: ‘I do worry that I'll get so comfortably fat that I won't be able to walk any more.’

• Stand-up Ava Vidal has upset the good burghers of Haywards Heath, by saying she found the Sussex town ‘slightly racist’ when growing up there. On Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, she said: ‘I’ve never suffered such classy racism. My cousins grew up in East London and… people would shout stuff at them like, “Go back to where you come from”. I never heard that in Haywards Heath, it was more like “return from whence you came”.’ But town mayor Margaret Baker has hit back, saying the town isn’t: ‘I certainly haven’t experienced anything like that and I have lived here for 40 years.’ No, love, that’s because you’re white…

• The Royle Family’s Liz Smith is going on holiday for the first time – at the age of 87. She is leaving her sheltered accommodation for a ten-day Adriatic cruise for a new BBC Four show.

• Dara O Brian was asked to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, but turned it down.

• Shappi Khorsandi was recognised on train the other day, and during the conversation her fan referred to ‘that other Iranian comedian’. ‘Omid Djalili?’ she suggested - as if there were many others. ‘That’s the one,’ came the reply. ‘Are you married to him, then?’

• Interviewed before his dates in Wales this week, Mark Thomas spoke to the South Wales Echo about what he would be doing on stage. So is it 'Welsh MPs beware?' the reporter asked him. 'I wouldn't put it quite like that,' the comic replied. The newspaper's headline? 'Mark Thomas says Welsh MPs beware.’

• Simon Pegg on his drunken nights: ‘'I can recall one [time] I woke up one morning in an overturned chair in a friend’s front room with Shreddies stuck to my face. Not sure how I got there…’

SOURCES: The Observer, Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy, YouTube, Teletronic.co.uk, Daily Telegraph, Woman's Weekly, Brighton Argus, The Sun, Daily Telegraph, Chortle, South Wales Echo, Sunday Mirror

Published: 3 Jul 2009